Astrid Hawk

The rare 2nd book in a trilogy that is actually better than the 1st one! But ouch, that cliffhanger...

This was surprisingly good - not just for a debut, but in its own right. Lots of queer joy, equal or more queer angst, grief, and definitely a lot of love, learning, and growing.

Girls Girls Girls is semi-autobiographical, which is probably how Blanckensee is able to get inside her main character/narrator Hannah's head so well. The story follows Hannah and her girlfriend Sam, 2 18 year olds from Long Beach, NJ, who flee Long Beach just after their high school graduation for the lesbian promised land of San Francisco. When they get there, they discover a new freedom and their community - but also hardship in figuring out who they are, where they belong, and learning how to survive.

Unable to find jobs without having a place to live, and unable to afford a place to live without a steady well-paying job, they discover stripping. Sam takes to it like a moth to flame, but Hannah struggles with the taboo of it, with having to put on a mask and a different persona. Hannah is also struggling with her evolving sense of home - something we probably all experience the first time we leave our childhood homes, where you go through a phase of just not really belonging anywhere for awhile. At least, I certainly remember going through it when I made my own east-coast-to-west-coast move at the age of 22. Meanwhile, Sam wants to go out and meet other lesbians, make friends, grow in a different direction from Hannah.

Although I am not a lesbian woman, I'm not Jewish, and I'm a bit younger than Hannah (my first experience with San Franscisco was in 2000, and it was a typical tourist experience - definitely didn't involve the Tenderloin, stripping, sex, or drugs), there was a lot about her character that I deeply identified with. Her shyness. Her nameless fear of calling people she cares about, letting it get to the point of extreme awkwardness, making the situation worse when she doesn't call (I *still* struggle with this). At one point she says she wants so badly to fit in that she doesn't fit in - that's definitely me.

About 2/3rds of the way through the story, 6 months into her San Francisco life, Hannah gets abruptly pulled back to confront the life and people she left behind in Long Beach. It's certainly not a joyful time - but Blanckensee does a fantastic job of handling the grief and frustration and complex emotions in a way that makes the reader feel them through Hannah but doesn't get mired down in unnecessary angst and drama. Through the pain of it you can see and feel Hannah growing. Learning about herself, learning to reframe the world around her, and learning to accept and be brave. She's remarkably mature, and I wish my own introspection at age 18 had helped me figure things out like that. (Of course, I didn't have a Bubbe like Hannah's to guide me.)

The story ends after Hannah returns to San Francisco and commits to her life there. This isn't a love story - there's no heart-tugging reconciliation, girl-gets-girl-and-lives-happily-ever-after. But Hannah does find a semblance of acceptance and peace, and the story ends on a hopeful note, all the various character threads resolved, even though some are sad or frustrating resolutions. They feel like realistic resolutions. You get the sense that Hannah's life goes on after we stop looking in on her, and that she still has so much more to discover about herself, about being queer, about relationships.

What I love about the queer community is that they are (typically - no group is homogenous and the queer community is no exception) more open to alternative viewpoints and alternative ways of life. Less judging. I know, queer people can be just as exclusive and *phobic as non-queer people - but as a general rule I've found the queer community to be a safer place than any to experiment with who you are and then be who you are. Blanckensee's characters discover this, and I love that it comes through in the book.

This was my 2nd read - my first being shortly after discovering the TV show. For some reason I remembered not liking book 2 quite as much as book 1, but this time around I decided I liked it better.

Book 2 introduces 3 new narrator characters - Praxidike Meng, Roberta "Bobbie" Draper, and Chrisjen Avasarala - to join Holden in telling the story. Meng is a biologist living on Ganymede - he's devoted his whole life to the science of growing things to sustain ecological systems indoors on space stations and asteroids and moons. I remember finding his chapters boring last time -- and certainly at first they still were. As the book went on, though, I started appreciating and then being impressed by the way his scientific perspective and habit of seeing everything as a system allowed him to see the larger patterns hidden in even unfamiliar situations, so he was able to provide some insight (and in some cases solutions) in ways that Holden and his crew couldn't.

Avasarala is by far my favorite character, and on this re-read it really became clear to me how the show changed her from her original form. Book Avasarala is so much better than show Avasarala - in the book, she is FAR more foul-mouthed and incisive, and equally determined to win, but not to the extent that she's willing to backstab her allies or throw them under metaphorical busses to get what she wants. She's more likeable in the book, despite having a harsher demeanor. And frankly, her over-the-top use of foul language and her dry insults just made me smile. There is a lot more visible political maneuvering in this book than in Book 1, but Avasarala makes it just as fun as the space action.

Bobbie... actually might be my least-favorite character this time around, but she does serve an important role. It's through Bobbie, a patriotic Martian marine who is forcibly soft-retired and betrayed by the government/military she feels intense loyalty to, that we see a more realistic glimpse of what Earth has become. Non-Earthers look down on Earthers as lazy and useless, just living on government Basic assistance (the classic Conservative viewpoint today when it comes to imagining socialism and expanded welfare) - and Bobbie is no different until she ends up actually walking along the city streets and meeting people. The frequent descriptions of gun-cleaning, the Martian super-suit, her devotion to her identity as a marine... those bits I found tedious and could have done without.

And finally, there's of course Holden, who I still love as a character. This time around he's struggling with the accumulated effect of the horror and violence he saw and participated in in Book 1, and his fear is causing him to be someone he doesn't want to be. His process of figuring it out is maybe a bit abrupt, but it still continues to build depth to his character beyond the typical space-opera-ship-captain trope.

The stakes and intensity get high starting at about the 65-70% mark, and from there on out the book is hard to put down. Plenty of political back-stabbing, coalition-building, and entire fleets changing sides left and right. It took me almost a month to read the book this time around, but that's more to do with my reading habits than to do with the book itself. It's still engrossing, but right now I only get 20-30 minutes to read at a time, which makes it hard to really immerse in a story like the way this one requires. (Plus, I read this one in the beautiful hard-cover special edition format, which means I can't just pick the book up during the day when I get a free minute - all my reading time for this one is at night when I'm half falling asleep before I even start.). Despite the long reading time, I liked this one even better than Book 1 this time around, and I'm looking forward to finishing the whole series even if it's a month per book.

I must admit, I did not enjoy this - but I can admire the craft that produced it nonetheless. It's like reading a religious text for much of it, from the grammar style (e.g. negations after the verb - "he came not there again") to some of the vocabulary choices ("he was wroth") to the practice of summarizing action but dwelling on the who and the where.

Andy Serkis was a fantastic narrator (especially when voicing dragons - less so with female voices) -- but overall it was a mistake to listen to the audio book as my first experience with this work. I found it impossible to keep track of all the different elven and place names, who was son/daughter/sister-son etc to whom, and where they had featured in vignettes earlier. It doesn't help that many characters have multiple names in the different "tongues" that are used interchangeably in the stories, and some are similar (at least audibly) to each other. I found myself listening in no more than 20-30 minute chunks and then looking up summaries and family trees and other resources online. Even then, I know I didn't retain much of the detail... there was simply too much of it.

In the last 30 minutes the book finally veers into familiar territory in the 3rd age. It made me laugh when we got there - all along I'd been thinking "if you wanted to tell the story of the Lord of the Rings in this format, it would be no more than 5 minutes long" and sure enough - it was less than that.

Throughout this long mythological study (because that's really what it was), I kept thinking back to the hubris that created this. Tolkein himself recognized it in the (45-minute-long!) excerpt of a letter that is included in this edition of the book, and I think it's part of why he never intended to publish it. He set out to create an English language epic myth, complete with creation story, because it didn't exist outside of religious contexts. And after a few hours I just couldn't help thinking... maybe it *shouldn't* exist? There are so many more enjoyable ways to express this creativity and these ideas.

Regardless, I powered through, because I've long felt that I can't claim to be a fan of Tolkein's work without ever having read The Silmarillion. After reading it (and having the context of his letter), I realize I was wrong. You can't fully understand Tolkein's work without understanding the context in which it was created, but a reading of The Silmarillion reveals more about Tolkein's view on enduring literature than on his main works themselves. And... as mentioned... he was never planning to publish this anyway.

Although Elie's tone put me off a bit at first (I felt like he was trying too hard to be funny and it came off a bit awkwardly in the beginning), he quickly hit his stride and I started enjoying the affronted incredulity.

There's not a lot in this book that would be new information for legal scholars, and probably 50-60% of it is more of a liberal-leaning rant than actual information. I didn't mind most of the ranty bits, even though it's a bit "preaching to the choir" (I guarantee no conservative-minded person is going to sit through that in hopes of broadening their perspective - I wouldn't if it was the other way around), because Elie has a way of putting things that are just "well, duh" but in a funny way.

I particularly enjoyed the 30 seconds where he explains how simple the difference is between sex, gender, sexuality, and f*cking, for example. His description of his son's relationship with his trans friend is similarly refreshing. (But the rant about conservative parents trying to police other people's kids in school, by contrast, was not particularly novel, and didn't really add to the legal discussion.)

For those of us who aren't legal scholars, the 50% of the book that isn't ranty has good information. Even if you're already familiar with the laws by name, which you probably will be (the adjective "popular" in the title refers to how well-known the laws are, not to how well they're supported/favored), there is good historical context for each of them that you might not be familiar with. In most cases, Elie also presents solutions to the laws (most of the time, it's simply repealment).

The book is an easy read, and humorous, but is a bit depressing/discouraging on the whole. Although Elie's tone is consistent throughout and never dives into the "there's just no hope" despairing tone, there's certainly plenty of justification for despair in the book - especially considering that even though this was written just a year ago (just before the 2024 election), several of the laws/issues mentioned have gone from bad to worse. Elie does present some possible reform solutions in the epilogue... but I think we're unlikely to see any of those in our lifetime the way it's going.

Six morally gray killers are recruited to work together in a plot to commit regicide against a brutal god-king and place one of the six on the throne instead. Each has their own dark secrets in their past that motivate them to participate in this quest, and each brings unique skills to the game. With that setup, it *should* have been a really interesting story that practically compelled me to keep turning the pages... but somehow it fell short.

The book follows their individual (well, paired) paths to join the group for the first half, and then follows the group's journey and coup attempt for the second half. I found the first half, while the group is split up into 3 pairs doing different things, a bit dull. Each pair encounters some drama along the way that challenges them to work together, but ultimately they feel like isolated incidents. They have no real bearing on the rest of the story beyond allowing the characters to showcase their skills, develop their personalities a bit better for the reader, and test/grow their bonds. But the incidents themselves feel like side quests that never really get tied back in at the end - especially Euyn's and Mikail's.

The story is told from each of the 6 characters' perspectives - some get more narrative time than others, but all are told in 1st person present tense. Unfortunately, all of their inner voices sound extremely similar. Royo uses "tough guy" speak, occasionally using "ain't" and sometimes mismatched subject/verb agreement (e.g. "it don't matter none") - but it isn't consistent, and feels jarring when it happens. Aeri occasionally has a bubbly, spritely inner voice, but it's also not consistent. The rest of them all sounded the same to me, and if you didn't read the chapter titles (which include the narrator's name and their location) it was possible to lose track of who was narrating when they were all in a group together.

It didn't help that most of the chapters were extremely short, some only 3 pages, and few in the 10-12 page range. There was little overlap in the timeline between one character's chapter and the next - more overlap might have helped add more opportunities for intrigue or puzzle solving, since it would have helped the narrators seem more reliable than they were. Instead, it felt a bit like they were sharing a camera, passing it between them from moment to moment, and the story felt a bit disjointed. In many cases, the perspective switch didn't really add much value.

Where most books earn the title of romantasy because they're really romance stories with a fantasy setting, this book actually features THREE romantic pairings. Fortunately, although this sounds like 3x the romantic nightmare, the author does a good job of making the dynamics of each relationship different - and none really overtakes the story or any of the individual characters. Euyn and Mikail's relationship is especially challenging (which makes it more compelling), as they are wrestling with class differences and the fact that they are both killers with strong self-interest. They think they love each other, but they also know that they won't sacrifice themselves or their individual goals for their love for the other. It's an interesting dynamic to watch, and I found it refreshing compared to the usual romantasy tripe.

I found it an enjoyable enough story over all, with plenty of secrets to slowly reveal (and a few saved for the next book) - it just wasn't as riveting as I thought it could have been from the premise. I'll likely read the next one to see where the series goes. While I'm not particularly attached to any of the characters or their relationships (slightly disappointing), I'm still interested in the group overall and their path to learning to be a found family.

I was pleasantly surprised, AT FIRST, to find that this book isn't at all what I thought it would be from the blurb. (Review preview - things went from good to a bit cringe to laughably bad.) I was expecting a more typical fantasy setting - the usual medieval-like fiefdoms with some magic thrown in. Instead, I was excited to realize in the first chapter that this is a modern or indeterminate-future dystopia! Right up my alley.

The premise is that the world as we know it has been "ripped" in a number of places to not just reveal but haphazardly mingle with a parallel universe. Among other things, this has let in an epidemic that turns people into mindless violent killers, and has created a food crisis and other scarcities due to the fact that nothing can grow in the mixed soils from the two worlds. But "Theirland" has also brought advances in pharmaceuticals, armaments, and nutrition science, which allows the resulting dictatorship to keep the population subdued in the name of safety through the use of a combination of martial law and fear induction psychology.

Really cool setup, right? I thought so anyway. Amid this setup, we're introduced to the main character Arden, who is recruited right away in the book's opening to join a trainee group at the military academy, which is revealed pretty quickly to be more like a prison laboratory. At first, it seems like the underdog-at-the-military-academy trope is going to be really fun and work well. I breezed through the first 80 pages of the book in a single sitting.

But pretty quickly after that, Arden meets Cyrus and things start devolving into the typical doe eyes, damsel-in-distress can't-help-falling-for-the-bad-boy-with-the-face-scar-and-muscles thing. The rest of the book plays out a lot like everything I complained about in my Heartless Hunter review. Arden also has a "good guy" love interest, which, like Rune/Alex in Heartless Hunter, is quickly eclipsed by the "inescapable" chemistry between Arden and Cyrus. Arden's attraction to Cyrus, in contrast, seems to be mostly reduced to pheromones - I cringed the first time his overpowering "ambrosia" scent is mentioned, and it seems to be mentioned with increasing frequency through the book, as if we'd forget that first jarring mention.

By the end of the book, I was seriously reminded of an 8- or 9-year old girl just telling themselves an imaginative love story. At one point, Arden wears "the pinkest, frilliest dress" with more ruffles than she's ever seen to a party (where she and Cyrus spend all of 5 minutes unsuccessfully prying secrets out of people before pulling a minor heist and then leaving). The whole thing just feels really juvenile, like the author is really just living in her own imaginary girl world rather than trying to stay true to the characters and the story.

At no point is magic directly mentioned in any of the technology they're using, but there's also no explanation given for how some of it might theoretically work. At the same party where Arden wears the frilly dress, she also wears a necklace that somehow ensures her voice can't be recorded (huh? how would that work?) even though she can talk at a normal volume and be heard by whoever she's talking to (and did it also mute Cyrus's half of the conversation, or others...? never explained). That same frilly dress miraculously renders her invisible to cameras (how convenient), even though she's perfectly visible to other humans, and the dress is not a body suit - it is sleeveless and does not cover her head. Earlier in the story, Cyrus gives her biometric trackers ostensibly to monitor her fear/panic level via heart rate (how convenient for the love interest to have access to her pulse!) that also conveniently allow him to watch her and talk to her (through... bone conduction, I guess?).

It just seemed to get more and more ridiculous without at all adding to the dystopian hero story I thought we were getting in the beginning. I seriously considered giving this just 2 stars - but I did really like the premise and... I guess I was feeling generous? (Edit: nope, downgraded to 2 after more reflection.) I'm not sure if I'll read the second book. It has potential to be better than the first with a greater focus on political intrigue and potential backstabbing, dual loyalties, etc... but looking at the rest of this author's repertoire, I don't have high hopes that she can stop herself from letting the romance overtake the story again.

I had to force myself to keep reading for most of this book. I really dislike teenagers, and this book did NOT help - whether one can consider it an accurate take on modern teenage social darkness or not. I wasn't like this as a teen - I didn't understand the social strata, and frankly didn't care. Reading this makes me extra glad I didn't. It's hard to empathize with the "We" narrator - a heterogenous group of teens who play judge and jury of their peers on a Discord server - and with the titular character Lucy Vale, who is a victim and cannot be blamed, but is also seemingly a stereotypical teenage girl whose mental health revolves around being popular and having a boyfriend. Authors, parents, etc don't seem to ever teach their teenage girls that there is actually another way to be. Other things to care about. So much could have been avoided here.

Most of this story really dragged. I couldn't keep up with who was popular and who was out, and therefore what the jury-of-peers narrator thought about those kids. I think that was part of the point, but it was exhausting and frankly boring to read. I was expecting something like a more modern set version of The God of the Woods - but it lacked both the tone-setting and the suspense/creepiness of TGotW. The last portion of the book, after "what happened" actually happened, moved a lot faster... but as the pages crawled by it became pretty obvious that the ending was going to be dissatisfying.

There's a lot here that makes this book really uncomfortable. The narration technique, the subject matter, the unresolved nature of everything, the fact that no one who deserves to be held accountable ever really is, the fact that the kids maybe grow up and learn a little but not what you really want them to learn. The start out self-centered and they remain self-centered even after they collectively realize their part in "what happened".

I guess a book being angering or disturbing is perhaps the sign of a good novel, and not a ho-hum 2-3* read. But... I don't know. It just wasn't an enjoyable experience. I might have to let this one sit a bit.

This is a review of the audio book - normally I don't call that out, but in this case there are differences between the audio and print versions that can impact the experience beyond just narration:

1. The audio book is "read" by David Sedaris (see #2 for why "read" gets quotation marks). If, like me, you have fond childhood memories of hearing some of his snippets on NPR, then you'll understand why there was no way I was going to read his book with my eyeballs. My imagination just wasn't going to quite get his inflection and cheerfully dark tone right.
2. Several (4? I think?) of the... essays? bits? chapters, we'll say, are actually recordings of Sedaris's live performances. I suspect that these will differ slightly from the versions in print in terms of exact wording used, but additionally, with the live recording of course you get the audience laughter (and Sedaris's pauses for said laughter). It was a bit jarring the first time, and my initial reaction was that I felt cheated in some way - which is a bit silly, really, but it's true. There's a sense of intimacy you get from listening to a memoir narrated by the author (the live-er of the life under discussion as it were) - as if the author is telling *me* their stories. I mean, of course it's obvious that they're speaking to a whole host of unknown people, but it's 1 at a time. Telling their stories, very personally, to each listener individually. And then suddenly when you hear an audience laughing, it breaks the spell. Almost like you're just standing backstage, or out in the hall of a performance center, overhearing a production that wasn't meant for you because you didn't get tickets to that show. I know, it sounds petty, but it was a bit weird. Also, the certain knowledge that those bits were just recycled bits from shows rather than fresh stories for the book was disappointing as well. Most likely *all* of them are, but having the audience laughing really made it clear.
3. Most audio books just have a short pause in between chapters - the narrator speaks the last sentence of the previous chapter, there's a short bit of silence, usually no more than 3 seconds, and the narrator announces the title of the next chapter and continues. This book uses little bits of music in those interstitial spaces. They're all different, more rhythm than melody - sort of like the little bits one might have heard on NPR really. I think by the end I liked it - but in some places it was bizarre because they layered the music over Sedaris's voice, which makes it both harder to hear the punch line/introduction, and is sometimes jarring... the tone of the music didn't seem to have anything to do with the tone of either chapters' content.

As for the content of the book - I will assume that there aren't really any meaningful differences between the audio and print/ebook formats. Many people have said that the book was too dark and less funny than his others. I haven't read his others (though as I said, I grew up hearing various of his bits on NPR), so I can't compare across works. I suspect that what people are referring to is that this book deals with some topics that most readers will consider dark/heavy:

• Several stories deal with Sedaris's younger sister's suicide
• One story deals with his mother's alcoholism
• Several stories (and one in particular focuses on it) deal with his father's aging
• His mother's death from cancer is frequently mentioned, though none of the stories focus on this experience

I personally didn't find those sections particularly dark. Sedaris's tone is perfect - not quite blithe, but just cheerful enough to imply that he sees the darkness and is choosing to find the humor in it. It doesn't feel forced, and there's an undercurrent of the sense that these things are very affecting - but it stays funny. Personally, as someone who has an alcoholic parent and is also dealing with rapidly aging parents right now, and is also approaching (or possibly in the middle of, depending on whose definition you use) middle age, I found these bits almost comforting. People rarely talk about these things outside of whispered confidences with friends (of which I have few) or dedicated support groups (which are far too serious and depressing for my tastes) - and it's helpful, to me, to know that even people with Sedaris's kind of brain, his kind of success, deal with these same issues and can find the humor.

There's plenty of other "lighter" content in the book however - spats and conflicting quirks between Sedaris and his boyfriend (he stated that he doesn't like the term partner, so I won't tar him with that brush by using the term even though I myself prefer it); ridiculous things his siblings do in their adulthood; hilarious anecdotes ranging from his beach house life to things that happened to him on-tour to various pranks he's pulled on people (to mixed effect). Overall I enjoyed it - a fun escape from the heaviness of the world around me for my walks the last few days.

Much more of a tragedy than the preceding two books in the series, and the ending was a bit dissatisfying - I feel like it was a bit rushed, sort of abruptly ending just a few minutes after the action stopped. So many questions left unanswered - although I suppose since half the cast of characters is gone, there wasn't going to be a good way to continue the story to answer them.

The introduction of some magical beasts from another realm that I won't name here also seemed a bit... haphazard? Rushed? I really thought they'd come into play in the end somehow, but they just kind of dropped out of the picture. Perhaps a topic for a future Book 4 (although again, half the cast is gone, so I think the series is considered complete).

On the positive side, I thought the pacing of this one was much better - there was a bit of stage-setting in the beginning that was slower, some recapping of the previous books, but it felt minimal, and the rest of it was pretty consistently building toward the end. I also thought Livingston did a much better job really developing the characters and their relationships in this book than in the previous two. Caden, Shay, Aleera, and Tew - apologies if I'm misspelling the names since I listened to the audio book - especially did a lot of growing in this one (some of which was begun in book 2, but they really seemed to come a long way in understanding themselves and the world in this one).

Overall the series was an enjoyable, easy listen - a good break from my usual nonfiction history or social justice fare. A fun escapist adventure you can just enjoy without thinking too hard about the world, and heroically humble characters you can easily root for.

This book is... fine? Does what it says on the tin I guess... a book that is mostly romance, with a fantasy backdrop. Enemies-to-lovers-to-(spoiler censored).

I think probably romantasy, or at least heterosexual romantasy, is just not my thing, despite the fact that I keep giving it a try again and again (mainly because that's what shows up as options, lately, instead of good epic or high fantasy). I find the characters shallow and stretched beyond all recognition in order to leave an impression. The men are tall, impossibly handsome, and complete assholes right up until they become completely emotionally and mentally hacked by their love for the female character. The women are usually scrappy when it suits the story, but mostly gorgeous and airheaded. They spend much of their mental time in the books berating themselves for falling in love with "such a man" as the male main character and trying to talk themselves out of it, only to be completely overcome the next time they catch a whiff of him. This book is no exception.

What made this story worse than the usual fare is that, not only are the two MCs exactly as I described above, but our heroine Rune has a sidekick and best friend who is amazingly supportive, has his morals all sorted out, never does anything creepy or insulting to her, is basically always thinking of how he can help her over himself... and is of course in love with her. Oh, and he's also the brother of the damaged bad boy love interest, who is in fact aware that his nice guy little brother is in love with Rune. Which makes it doubly difficult to try to sympathize with the love interest Gideon. Or Rune for that matter - who is so self-absorbed that she apparently doesn't notice her friend's interest. "Nice guys finish last" in this world I guess.

I did enjoy the magic system - although I don't read a lot of witchy books, this system felt close enough to common witch ideas to be recognizable but still different enough to feel fresh and creative. Witches in this world essentially do magic by finger-painting with blood. Where they get the blood (and how fresh it is) affects the type of magic it can be used for... and has other consequences as well. There's also this idea that each witch has a unique smell to her magic, and a unique "spellmark" - a ghost image that is left after the spell is cast. Rune spends most of the book doing lesser magic, since she's limited in where she gets her blood - and she actually doesn't even use it that often in the book until the end. But there's still enough magic there to keep it interesting.

There is what (I think) is supposed to be a twist towards the end of the book... but I saw it coming significantly earlier when a supposed-to-be-subtle hint was dropped. I don't know if I just picked up on it because I happen to be sensitive to the thing that was observed, or if it was really that obvious. Regardless, I then had to spend most of the rest of the book being frustrated that the other characters were such idiots and weren't putting 2 and 2 together. I guess I prefer this type of reveal to the one I read recently in "While the Dark Remains", where the reader feels intentionally misled... but still. It wasn't subtle.

Anyway. If you enjoy witches, blood magic without too much gore, and exaggerated characters who go from loathing to apparently mindblowing sex without making much of an effort to get to know each other, this book is for you. If you don't enjoy the romance part... maybe sit this one out, because it's pretty overpowering.

A first contact story where neither side is particularly moral - not immoral, but more amoral, bordering on nihilistic. The characters (aside from the abrasive asshole Da Shi, who is a minor character, inserted seemingly at random just to keep things moving) were flat and unmemorable. The "protagonist" Wang, particularly, was an empty shell, a lens through which the reader could discover sinister forces and supernatural mysteries, but who himself was simply directed around through the story, showed no particuarly personality, and made few decisions beyond which scientist's house to visit for his next existential crisis.

Ye Wenjie, the one character that provides the most connected thread through the whole book, had the most interesting story - but even she didn't have much of a character (though she certainly had the potential to, given her history). Her pivotal part of the tale was told mostly through lookback scenes, where she either tells her story to an audience, or is recorded in interviews. Her narrative voice is detached and flat, giving the reader the impression that she doesn't feel anything about the choices she made - which is both disturbing, and makes one wonder where she got the passion to make them to begin with.

<spoiler>Even the aliens turn out to be, ironically, two-dimensional - they've bred all the passion and emotion out of themselves, and have evolved into an autocratic society in which everyone has a role or is permanently dehydrated. Ironically, the only dimension they seem to have retained in their evolution is arrogance. Are they intended as a far-evolutionary-future representation of humanity, rather than a foil for present humanity? Possibly. I suspect neither is correct though - in the end I got the impression that ultimately Liu wants humanity, and humanity's science, to heroically overcome. I guess we'll find out later.</spoiler>

Given all that, why four stars? I guess... although I didn't find it particularly enjoyable and struggled getting hooked on the story, I was still impressed by the ideas in here. Don't get me wrong; this is a book with long expository technical sections, describing principles of physics, proton structure, radio and microwaves, and multi-dimensionality. This is true "hard" sci-fi, with difficult concepts and even more incredible leaps from those concepts. Think Andy Weir, but instead of written by an engineer for a layman, written by an academian for an advanced student. Is it all believable? Certainly not. But I found myself continuously impressed at how Liu could take these hard scientific principles, distill them down enough to build a story around using them, and then extrapolate into the imaginative without going too far into the gee-whiz, abra-cadabra zone (in my opinion anyway). The fact that I couldn't quite understand the science (not being a physicist myself, but having just enough university level education that I felt like I *should* understand it) just made me feel like I was reading something worthy. Maybe not great writing, but advanced ideas.

Additionally, this whole book centers around the Cultural Revolution in China, and the impact that conflict had on the scientific community especially, but also on the state of knowledge and ideas as a whole in China. Oddly, this is an historical period that, as an American, has been largely skipped in my education. Since my school days, I've read a number of stories written by and about children of the diaspora, who fled to Taiwan and later to the US during the first half of the twentieth century. Those stories don't talk about the Cultural Revolution, and even if they did, they wouldn't cover it from the same lens this book did. This wasn't a historical fiction novel, and in fact it mostly took place long after the Cultural Revolution was ended. The period itself didn't impact the plot, really, other than to provide a reason for Ye Wenjie to end up where she did. But it *did* provide the backdrop for one of the themes of the book - the importance of scientific advancement, and how humanity changes as a result.

This book made me realize that I don't read enough non-Anglo science fiction. Or... any, really, unless you count the Jules Verne novels that I read years ago. I'm glad this one was translated - although it wasn't the first contact story that I would have wanted to read for fun, it got me thinking. At first, I thought a lot of the blunt dialogue and flat characterization and descriptions were a side effect of the translation to English. But after reading the translator's note at the end, I realize that, as any good translator should be, he was very carefully faithful to the tone and culture of the original text. It just sounds blunt and flat to me because I'm used to something different.

I'm also aware that there is a lot of controversy around Liu's political philosophies. Some call him a fascist, referring to his statement that democracy isn't right for China, and citing his support of internment camps. Others say he's just a mouthpiece of the Chinese communist regime. Maybe he is... but if so, he's not a good one. (I tend to think he isn't... those regimes are usually much more masterful in crafting written works that will appeal to their target audiences... and this book was definitely not written to appeal to a Western science fiction audience.). Regardless of the truth, I don't think Liu's politics make it a bad book. It's science fiction - intended to provide allegories for things happening on earth by showing what might be or what might have been. It's up to you to decide whether you agree with it or not.

This was my 2nd read - 1st one was way back when, in 2016 or so. I thought it was a 5-star read then, and now I think it's even better.

Set a couple centuries in the future, humans have not just colonized but built civilization on the moon (Luna) and Mars. Mars has developed its own national identity, separate from Earth (which, in this book, is represented as a single faction behind the UN, rather than the separate nations it is today). With the help of feats of engineering, people have also built city-colonies on asteroids and moons beyond the inner 4 planets - known collectively as Belters, they have now lived for generations on small planetary bodies - asteroids that have been artificially spun to create weak gravity, and space stations. They have developed different physical traits from spending their lives in low gravity, and have their own culture and patois. Unsurprisingly, Earth and Mars don't like each other - competing for political control and sovereignty of the solar system - and Belters, having grown out of the working classes and having a greater struggle to survive than those with a real planet to call home, feel at best overlooked and more often abused for their labor and resources.

All this is established before the story of Leviathan Wakes actually begins. It's a great setup, and, no matter what you think of the technology advancements that enabled this, completely realistic from a human behavior perspective. Most (all?) of this book takes place either on ships or on a handful of the Belt stations, and I loved all the details in here about how people and civilization have adjusted to life in inhospitable vacuum - the descriptions of the "holes" they live in on the stations, the foods they eat, what becomes luxury and what is commonplace, the coriolis effect in everyday life, the "juice" they use to keep them alive in high-g situations, the magnetic boots for walking around in null gravity, the rough culture and class striations on the Belt stations that's just a part of everyday life.

And through it all, the common recognizable themes of the haves vs the have-nots, the racial/ethnic tensions that have transcended skin color and landed on bone structure instead. It's so rich and well-thought-out. The first time I read it, I remember that a lot of the nuance went over my head. I remember being confused as to why Belters, who themselves were technically colonizers, originally from the Inner Planets they despise, dependent on the Inner Planets still for resources, hated them so much. I didn't really understand why Holden's announcement started riots. I guess younger me was just ignorant, not making the (really obvious) connection between racism and generational trauma in real life today and the racism and generational trauma extrapolated to a solar-system-wide landscape. Some of the tensions are quick, casual, short conversations (usually between Miller, the character who serves as the reader's view into life and social structure on Belt stations). On re-read, I like that the authors don't spoon-feed all of this, but rather trust the reader to interpret what's going on, why Miller behaves and reacts the way he does, why the riots are happening, why Havelock has such trouble getting along.

The story itself is told from the perspective of James Holden, a disgraced UN naval officer who has renounced planetary allegiance and is content to live a civilian life on an ice hauler (sort of the equivalent of an officer on a container ship today), and Miller, a cop/detective working for the Earth-run security force that serves as the local law enforcement on the Belt station Ceres. Holden and his crew of an Earther, a Martian, and a Belter (plus some other characters who don't last very long) are sucked unwillingly to center stage when they answer a distress call that turns out to be a trap, and their ice hauler and all their shipmates are blown to smithereens. Miller, an alcoholic just going through the motions of his colorless existence on Ceres, is caught up in the action when he's asked to find a missing person - the daughter of a rich Earther who just happens to have been on the ship that Holden's crew was trying to help. Eventually, Miller's and Holden's paths join, where they discover an even more horrifying/sinister mystery and destructive plot unfolding.

Both Miller and Holden are great characters. Holden is still figuring himself out, not entirely sure where he stands on big questions like who decides whether people deserve to die, but fully committed to the principle that no one should get to have secrets. His common identifying trait is that whatever is happening to him, he's going to blab it to the solar system, consequences to others be damned. He is "righteous" to a fault - but also fiercely loyal to those he considers his friends, and his crew becomes found family to him and to each other. Miller, on the other hand, is hardened by his life experiences - he no longer treasures life, not even his own. At first, his assignment to find the missing Julie is just another mystery to be solved, but when his alcoholism plus the rising violence and tensions on Ceres cause his livelihood to disappear, he finds himself obsessed with his own construction of Julie as a person, and he is compelled as if by a greater force to find her and save her.

Although there is a point in the book where Miller's and Holden's voices start sounding similar, it's very intentional, and for the most part they act as foils to each other. They are reluctant allies - Holden viscerally rejects Miller's shoot-first-think-later-or-not-at-all approach, and Miller is judgmentally dismissive of Holden's naïveté in trusting that if the public "just knows the truth" everything can be solved. It's a great dynamic, an ever-present tension - although at times it does feel like it's repeated a little too often. Unlike the racial tension stuff, that can be more subtle, the Holden/Miller tension is spelled out a lot more plainly via repeated mental flagellation in each character's respective chapters. This is probably my one negative observation in the whole 500+ pages, and it's pretty minor all things considered.

Amidst all of this, there is plenty of action to be found in the story as well - space battles, station riots, close escapes from both ships and stations. Everything from verbal banter, to gunfights in corridors and maintenance shafts, to rail-gun battles across hundreds of kms in space. There are a few "gee-whiz" moments - like the coffee maker that can brew coffee no matter what the gravity is (the TV show gets this wrong btw, showing the coffee falling into the mug like a standard keurig drip), and the ship auto-doc that can apparently fix everything from compound fractures to radiation sickness to cancer, and the "juice" that's made up of an unspecified mix of stimulants and blood-viscosity-maintainers which probably wouldn't actually keep a human's bones and organs from collapsing at 10gs. I love it all though. To me, this is what good sci fi should be. Just enough of a stretch to take the reader outside of our current situation, and provide a revelatory mirror into our world with a great story and characters you care about.

3.5*
[Disclaimer: I haven't read the book that everyone compares this one to, and that the author herself said greatly inspired this one. It's possible that it entirely matches the tone and quality in that other story, and thus has a built-in fan base. I can't compare.]

Tough to put a 1-5 rating on this one. As others have noted, the pacing is very slow up until the big moment right around the 70% mark. Through about 80% of the book, the story is told with alternating chapters of present and past, but the main character, Brynja, is the narrator throughout the whole timeline. Like others, I found the “past” chapters more engaging than the “present” chapters, and I really had a hard time getting hooked on the story until that moment at the 70% mark. It's a long time to stay invested in a book to get to the reward (but to be fair, I felt the same way about Sanderson's The Way of Kings, and that book is 3x the length... so I think it's hypocritical of me to knock a book for requiring some investment).

The #1 thing that I think detracts from this book are the deuteragonists Saga and Vil (or maybe they're tritagonists? I'm not sure where one might rate them compared to Ballast). They are both toxic friends, consistently emotionally manipulating Brynja throughout the story, and it's infuriating that she never seems to notice that they're doing it (and no, it's not subtle). When your so-called friends are demanding you constantly tend to their feelings, telling you who you can and can't love/date/bond with because it should be them, duh, and then breaking down or having emotional outbursts that they expect you to drop everything and get them through... that is your cue to get the heck out of that relationship. I kept thinking that maybe the flashbacks would reveal exactly WHY their bonds were so strong, why Brynja kept feeling some kind of obligation to them, but frankly most of the backstory just showed me that they had never ever, not once, shown Brynja any real trust or friendship that wasn't in service of their own political goals - and to the very last page I couldn't figure out why she made the decisions she did to stay with them and support them. Maybe I was supposed to feel that way, but it was frustrating and felt like a clumsy plot device to interject conflict for the sake of conflict, drama for the sake of drama.

Also, Vil is just completely cringy. Gross. The fact that Brynja is actually struggling with resisting attraction to him knocks her down several pegs in my opinion.

My second issue was that the big reveal seemed like it had been deliberately planned for shock value. There's a difference between building in a bunch of believable red herrings and intentionally misleading and lying to the reader. Brynja is an unreliable narrator - duh. But after that moment, it took another several chapters of more flashbacks to try to explain why the big reveal actually made sense in the context of everything she'd told us before. And I don't think it was entirely successful. I can't get into specifics without spoiling the story, but it left me feeling like it was a bit contrived.

And my third major issue - the magic system. It was revealed in bits and pieces, slowly at first where the story is mostly focused on non-magic users, and then in the active back third of the book we suddenly get a much bigger glimpse of all the various abilities. I liked the idea of it - but the problem was that the author doesn't really stick much to her own rules. When she needed a particular character to do something remarkable, but they'd be limited by the type of ability they possessed, that character was suddenly able to do something that no other magic user of that particular type was ever able to do. I had the sense that there were no checks and balances - pretty much anyone could do anything to overwhelm anyone else if the plot required it - complete with godlike abilities. The last conflict was just a giant escalating mess with everyone more powerful than the last. Blood, flame, earth, vibrations, beasts everywhere.

(Minor issue - there is A LOT of vomiting in this book. Brynja throws up pretty much every time the bad guys do or say something that triggers a trauma memory, or sometimes even on walking into a place. Saga does some vomiting as well. I get it - they're extremely traumatized from their pasts. But I personally loathe vomit. I don't like it in real life, and I definitely don't like picturing it in stories. Once or twice - ok, I get it. Every other chapter... can we find another mechanism please?)

Despite all of that, I really did like the last quarter of the book. I felt invested in Brynja's story at that point, and despite all of her questionable decisions and annoying childish weaknesses along the way, I wanted her to win. I liked that the ending was not just “everyone got what they deserved and lived happily ever after”, but that it was left in a sort of tenuous situation. And the emotions of the last few scenes stayed with me like after-images - which IMO is the mark of a good story. Would I read it again? Probably not, given all the wading through the slow bits in the first 70%. But I have to give it the credit it deserves for being a good and engaging story in the end.

I don't understand why this book has such high reviews. I honestly thought, for a good 50% of the book, that it was written by AI. I looked up the author at that point, and I read the note in the back of the book that explains the history that inspired the story, and yes, she appears to be a real person... but I still can't rule out the idea that she fed it to AI. It just feels quick and sloppy.

Throughout the story, the author tells rather than shows - with everything. The dialog was childish and clunky. The author apparently knows no synonyms for “said”. (Seriously, all dialog was “Jonathan said”, “I said”, “Effie said”... except for the few monologues, when it was clear who was giving a speech or an explanation, and then no utterance verb was used at all.) With the exceptions of some descriptions of outfits (and there are a LOT of descriptions of outfits) and the ubiquitous references to getting Coke from the Coke machine, there's not much in the book that's immersive about the time period. The vocabulary and colloquial phrases used are all contemporary - none of the characters do or say anything indicative of the time period. Although the main character corresponds with her family via written letters, mail seems to arrive remarkably quickly - even across the Atlantic Ocean to and from post-war Britain. (To be clear, the book is not full of anachronisms... no one pulls out a mobile phone or sends an email... but the way the characters interact feels too modern.)

The story itself isn't terrible, but the foreshadowing is so heavy-handed (and, again, the habit of telling rather than showing) completely removes all intrigue and sense of mystery. It's pretty clear from the moment each of the “bad guys” is introduced that they're going to be, well, one of the “bad guys”... and at some point you just wish the MC would get on with it and figure it out already. But no, actually, she never does figure it out... she has to be told. And the plot point that provides the climax is so unbelievable that it sort of ruined the whole resolution anyway.

On top of all that... there is very little actual cryptography in the book (although this isn't really surprising - most historical fiction writers aren't also math and codebreaking experts), but there is a LOT of clumsy romance that feels very adolescent. In the author's note, she says that she read the story of the female codebreakers in the late 1940s/early 1950s and then thought “what if one of the codebreakers fell in love with one of the men from the FBI?”. Frankly, that question should have remained a thought exercise. It did not enhance the spy/codebreaking story. Perhaps the book would have been too short that way - or perhaps it would have allowed the author to put more effort into the spy story itself.

I can't recommend this book - unless, like me, you get a free copy and just want an easy read, in which case - go for it.

[Read July 2025]

3.5*. A bit of a disappointment compared to Meru, since the entire thing took place on Earth and reminded me a lot of reading real humans' accounts of endurance endeavors (like the PCT or AT, mountain climbs, and ocean crossings). I guess not surprisingly, my favorite parts were the parts that involved speculative technology, like the lattice travel. I appreciate what Divya was trying to explore with this, but it just wasn't my favorite.

This was probably my most disappointing read of the year. When I discovered it, I was immediately convinced that I'd love the whole series, and dove into this with excitement when it finally arrived. The first several chapters were... uncomfortable... but not too off-putting - historical fiction often puts female characters in uncomfortable situations since misogyny is unfortunately a pretty much global theme across time in our world. But after I got through about 100 pages, after Lakshmi's sister arrives and things have gone from bad to worse between them, I was having to force myself more and more to continue, until one evening I realized it was just too much of a chore and decided to give myself the night off.

Usually I can come back to an uncomfortable book after a couple days' break from it... but this one sat on my bedside table for an entire month and a half, and even then I still didn't relish the thought of picking it up again. I finally forced myself to get through it (I don't like DNF-ing books unless they're really badly written, or life legitimately gets in the way, or the author is proven to be a scumbag) 10 pages at a time, thinking about it like doing a house chore.

My issues with this book did not include boredom. In fact, I rated it two stars instead of 1 star because the prose is flowing and engaging. It brings the sights, smells, and sounds of 1950s Jaipur to life (at least, as the author envisioned it), and I love that sort of experience in historical fiction. I was certainly never bored.

Instead, I found myself infuriated by the characters. Lakshmi, the main character who we are supposed to be rooting for because she has taken her life in her own hands, escaped an abusive marriage, and built her own business in a world where women really have no rights and no autonomy, is, at best, extremely challenging as a heroine. She has built her business as a henna artist for rich women, where she is privy to their most intimate needs and secrets. Her primary business is built partially on trust, partially on mutual assurance of secrecy through the threat of blackmail, and partially on superstition. She has a secondary business that actually keeps her afloat more than her primary business - an underhanded arrangement facilitated by the husband of one of her key clients.

I am not from India, so have no authority to comment on whether or not this type of business was even realistic in 1950s Jaipur. I will say that the whole thing didn't feel very believable based on the culture that my close South Indian friends have shared with me. But worse than that was just how unlikeable Lakshmi's character was. I found it difficult to feel any sympathy for her, despite the fact that her husband was abusive. When we enter the story, she's about 15 years removed from that abusive situation, and is doing well for herself. As we start to learn more about how she got there, though, we figure out that she's arrogant and self-centered. She thinks very highly of her skills and her accomplishments, and she clearly sees herself above (not economically or socially, but in her value as a person) all of her clients (except possibly Kanta, with whom she seems to have a more legitimate relationship, the origin of which is never quite explained).

She looks down on all others - for allowing themselves to stay in their gilded cages, trading wealth and comfort for captivity; for being in arranged marriages where she knows about all the infidelities of the husbands; for actually putting stock in her henna designs and mandalas and snacks. Like she knows the whole thing is a sham, but rather than regretting that she has to earn a living this way, she enjoys it - enjoys taking money and secrets from her customers in exchange for, essentially, a show.

Then Lakshmi's orphaned younger sister Radha shows up, and injects angst and entropy into Lakshmi's carefully constructed order. If Lakshmi was hard to like, Radha is impossible. Despite having come from literally nothing, Radha is ungrateful and pretentious and just downright awful. And somehow Lakshmi still beats herself up throughout the book on how she could have been a better sister. Perhaps we were supposed to dislike Radha - and feel for the moral challenges that Lakshmi is faced with - but Radha is just so disgusting without any real cause that it just doesn't make any sense that Lakshmi wouldn't just kick her out, sister or no. For that matter, why does Radha even stay? We're told that once she learned of Lakshmi's existence all she wanted was her sister. Then when she gets her, and finds out that Lakshmi is actually an adult with a life and responsibilities, she blames Lakshmi for it and nothing Lakshmi gives her is good enough. Huh? I mean, just because you grow up with nothing doesn't mean you should be grateful when someone gives you trash... but that's not what was going on here.

The last straw for me (which actually didn't even happen until AFTER that 1.5 month hiatus I took) was that inexplicably, when things start getting really tough for Lakshmi with Radha, she goes to her client's husband's mistress's house and sleeps with said husband there. And for some reason she's then mad at her client when said client rather predictably causes her business to unravel. It was just so out of character that it was clearly done just to create a climactic event for the plot. And I really hate when authors make their characters do things just to get that mouth-opening eyes-widening pearl-clutching reaction from readers.

And.. don't even get me started on the character of Malik. The street rat who basically runs Lakshmi's business for her (including all the secret aspects she wouldn't want to get out) but whom she's happy to just leave on the streets in poverty. Where the reader is supposed to believe that he "prefers" to live in the back alleys with the other urchins, digging sandals to wear out of trash heaps and surviving on handouts and filched scraps. Yeah... sure.

After getting through all of the manufactured angst and poor decision-making by the characters, the ending is pretty milquetoast. In essence, it's a "happily ever after" for everyone. With the exception of the parrot Madhu Singh, I am left with zero interest in what happens to anyone after the last page.

3.5*
I'm surprised this made BOTY a couple years ago - but in my limited experience with romance and chick-lit, this one definitely stands out as higher quality than the others. If you're reading in a literary desert, this book would certainly stand out as an oasis... but I don't think that elevates it to award-winning writing across the board.

This is a VERY tropey book. At 2 separate points it actually self-recognizes this - but the tropes go beyond even its own self-recognition. As I said above, I don't read much romance, but I've seen enough rom-coms from their hey-day in the 90s to recognize common patterns and predictable storylines when I see them. In this case it was bearable at first, and then became frustrating as the pages went on.

I read this one quickly because it was paced so consistently, it was dead simple, and because I was just completely sick of the main characters' repetitive inner monologues - “I love him/her, but I'm only hurting myself because he/she doesn't love me back”. After the 3rd or 4th time this trope was repeated for EACH main character, I'd had enough and just wanted them to get to the inevitable conclusion. That said, it DID continuously move along, and I think that helped me get at least some enjoyment out of it.

I didn't find the characters particularly funny, even when they told me that they found each other funny. That's ok - I wasn't reading the book for witty comedy. I WAS disappointed, however, that the main characters and their best friends all acted so incredibly immature - their thoughts and inner monologues and even what they liked to do with their free time - for doctors. They acted as catty and, well, average as the nurses they oversaw (who were presented as nurses often are... catty and average and in need of someone else to lead them). I did, however, really appreciate the portrayal of introverted anxiety in Jacob - although it was inconsistent, particularly toward the end when Briana's trauma started taking center stage, it's probably the first book I've read that actually nailed how someone like me gets through life with other humans, without identifying said individual as sick or disabled.

I added a half star after reading the author's note at the end, in which she tells her own story with auto-immune disease and kidney failure. Although Benny was never a main character, and his story was more of a mechanism driving the main characters together, I appreciated the nuances of his situation more after reading what the author went through.

I'm not sure what to say about this that others haven't said before. Before picking it up, I was concerned that it was drawn by a white man and written by another white man. It is Lewis's story, yes, but I was afraid there would be small prejudices that went unnoticed in the images, or harmful hero-painting of the white figures or downplaying of the white characters' negative sides. In the end I didn't get that impression - although as a white person myself I may not notice biases that are too ingrained. After all, I'm still learning.

Mayor West in particular was the most dubious portrayal for me - he was introduced as a supporter, someone we might call an Ally today, but he was not using his position as a leader to actively fight for desegregation. He was rather passive, letting the public momentum convince him to voice support for desegregation (but not demand it!). I know this was a huge step at the time, but I would have appreciated a more clear judgement of West. Instead the book has the reader watch the confrontation between West and the marchers in Nashville and witness him saying “I can't ask business owners to do what they don't want to do”.

That aside, the overall book is short and 100% worth the read. I'm a bit ashamed that as a Georgia native I didn't actually know John Lewis's story before. The art is all black-and-white, probably a nod to the media at the time and a metaphor for the subject matter. It's a good choice - it works really well and light and shadow is used masterfully to portray both time and mood. Again - a quick read, and worth it.

Waffling between 2 and 3 stars. The writing wasn't terrible, but I found this book disappointing - not much happened, the world-building was shallow, and I felt like I was being beaten over the head with the “slow burn” part of the romance. There was a stark contrast between Sarkas's past and his (rather inexplicable) attraction to Halla that was never really explained at all, so it was hard to root for the romance.

To be fair, I don't think this book was ever intended to be for a high fantasy audience, and I've said before that I end up not really enjoying romantic plots or sub-plots. This book is for an audience seeking a light-hearted romantasy, not requiring too much emotional pain nor intellectual investment. That just isn't me - I like high fantasy with lots of complex characters, inter-woven subplots, and complex worlds and factions. Think Sanderson or Erikson or Weeks. I keep hoping to find a new author/world like those... alas this is not one of them.

I found the main characters here too exaggerated; there was too much time spent in pointless banter just to continuously establish their personalities. Over and over and over again. I appreciated the presence of a non-binary main character, and the multiple allusions to a LGBTQ-accepting world. But as is often the case, the NB character feels flat, gray, uninteresting - they're not given a part in the relationship (nor are they given any real relationship or friendships of their own), and they are given the role of arbiter in all aspects of the main characters' lives (their romance, their legal matters, their partnership) without a single sentence devoted to how they might feel about this role or their lot in life. They are a sidekick, and not a terribly interesting one at that. All in all, disappointing.

Intertwined themes of music & memory & the branches of lives. Of love & loss & finding home when pulled out of place & culture. Allusions to the red string folk theory about people whose lives are connected over distance and time.

There's a lot of pain in this book. Some of it is loud and physical, but much of it is quiet spiritual aching. A lot of regret and a lot of hard choices. It isn't a pleasant story most of the time; there are few moments of true happiness. It feels real thanks to that.

Readers seem to have strong opinions one way or another about the bi-directional timelines - where Suchi's moves forward and Haiwen's backward. I didn't love it or hate it... and I think it was a creative way of storytelling that helped give the reader a shape of where Suchi's life was going through Haiwen's experience, with details in Haiwen's future getting filled in through Suchi's past. I did feel that it left some gaps though - the time periods didn't overlap most of the time on the two timelines, so I was constantly trying to piece together for myself “what was Suchi doing while Haiwen was thinking this?” Or “what country was Haiwen in at this point in Suchi's life?”

This is the second book I've read that was set in this time period in China/Taiwan/US, stretching through to the present day (the other being Peach Blossom Spring). They're very different books, but it was still hard not to compare/contrast them sometimes. I'm glad I had the history I learned from PBS in my head when I read this one - the Sino-Japanese war, the Chinese civil war, the cultural animosity between Taiwanese and Chinese war refugees, the reality of the next generation whose childhoods were spent in Taiwan but adulthoods in America. PBS followed 3 characters in 3 generations, so the author didn't have to deal with the extreme age differences in the characters' narration that Homeseeking does. It's really impressive how Homeseeking has distinct inner voices for the characters in childhood, adolescence, middle age, and old age while still maintaining their clear unique identities. Overall well done, despite all the pain and slow pace.

3.5 *
More complete review to come.

This one was tough for me to rate. On the one hand... Maia went through a lot in eir journey, as many of us do, and this is a very personal book. Since the act of publishing such a personal story, and dealing with the (BS) social attacks e was subjected to in the aftermath, was such a courageous act, it feels wrong to label the book as anything less than 5 stars. On the other hand, there were several points in here that (as a NB person) I found uncomfortable, or with the potential to perpetuate slightly “off” misconceptions. And... I rate books for enjoyment, and I don't think I enjoyed this 5 stars worth.

What I liked:
- The art was great. I'm not much of a graphic novel or comics person... jagged lines and zaps and dialog that's scrunched down to fit into speech bubbles and squares just doesn't work for me. But Maia did a great job at striking the right balance between illustrations and text, and e used art effectively to evoke feelings - pain, confusion, questioning, etc - that was going on in eir head at various points that just pure text wouldn't have been able to do as effectively.
- How much I related to a lot of Maia's experiences and thoughts. Everything from body- and puberty-denial as a young teen to not having the courage to correct people's pronoun use as an adult. I especially felt a lot of empathy toward Maia with the micro-agressions/resistance that e experienced from eir own family members (eir mother and aunt, notably). Although... Maia doesn't really address this (see below).

What I didn't like/found uncomfortable:
- There's a pervasive thread through the whole book that Maia's identity is justified because of eir continuous history of just not feeling like either binary gender. It's a book about a gender journey, so it makes sense that e would have selected mostly the gender identity-related events from eir childhood rather than talking about any other formative or notable points... because it's not really a full memoir. BUT... in doing so, it reinforces this idea that a gender identity is only legitimized if the person has ALWAYS felt this way, even before they had the words to express it. (Schuyler Bailar does a bit of this in his book “He/She/They” as well.). Both Maia and Schuyler both experienced gender dysphoria and gender dissonance (my term, because dysphoria is somewhat fraught these days) as kids and teens, but it doesn't mean that EVERY trans, NB, or otherwise gender-expansive adult has to have experienced this as a kid to be legitimized in their identity.
- There is some allusion to the “born this way” theory in a positive light - apparently it brought Maia some comfort, as it does to other trans people (but not all). It's a problematic concept though - sort of like arguing a straw man instead of getting to the nut of the issue. It erodes the work to change the social gender structure by legitimizing cis binary/trans-phobic people's argument that everyone is born a particular gender. I'm glad it helped Maia feel better about eirself. But I cringe to think that even well-intentioned cis people who are trying to understand the trans world may come away with the wrong impression - namely that some people are just born differently, not that the entire gender social structure is wrong and far more fluid than how society structures it. (For what it's worth, I do think Schuyler does a better job of explaining the science behind the “born this way” theory in his book, and does not conflate intersex people with trans people - but he doesn't, IMO, do a good job of expressing WHY current accepted gender theory is problematic.)

I could keep going on and on about these issues. Maybe I should just write my own book. :) Regardless, it was stupid to ban this book, as I suspected all along, and I commend Maia's courage for publishing it and sticking with it.

This was a tough one to rate. I usually rate books based on how much I liked them, rather than how much utility/literary value I think they have or whether others will like them (because I'm not qualified to assess any of that). But with this book, I can't even figure out how much I liked it. I'd give the 2 halves completely different ratings.

After the first 50% of this book, I thought I'd be giving it a 2-3 star review and getting on with my life without giving the sequel a second thought. Somehow, things turned around for me in the last quarter of the story until I was slammed with the sudden realization in the last few pages that there was no way I'd be missing the sequel. I'm struggling to figure out what changed. There was a lot I didn't care for in the first 50-75% of the book:
* The plot moved extremely slowly. The writing was decent and I wasn't ever so bored it put me to sleep, but it was slower than I wanted.
* Silla is supposed to be a “soft” female lead, but that softness came out as overly feminine and weakness to me. Overly feminine to the point of being annoying to me. There were parts where other characters acknowledge that she is actually very strong despite her outward appearance, but I never got that impression. Typically the times when she is labelled “strong”, she's done so because it was either act or die, or because she was so naive/ignorant that she didn't know all the implications of what was happening.
* I didn't understand the “I loathe you but I also desperately want you sexually” thing. I have no problem with sex scenes, but the “slow burn” parts just felt cringey to me.
* Silla's naivety seemed inconsistent. She didn't seem to understand anything about the magic in the world she lived in, although she was 20 years old, and her mother had been killed for it. She had never thought to ask questions... of anyone? Yet she kept the “old religion”, which was just as forbidden as the magic, and apparently knew an awful lot about sex for having been raised so sheltered with no discussion of sex and romantic love in her upbringing. It just didn't make sense to me.
* The world-building itself was pretty slow, mostly due to the device of Silla's ignorance. It made the eventual reveal of Silla's nature and background pretty unremarkable, since even with limited information the reader figured it out long before.
* There has GOT to be a better metaphor for the prickly dawning of the sensation of fear than “ice trickling down her spine”. I know we're in a universe that's based on Iceland, so it makes sense that there would be a lot of cold/ice metaphors in use, but this one was so overused that it was driving me nuts.

I could go on. There was a lot I didn't like in the first half. So what changed?

Two things I think:
1. Once the breadth of the magic system in the world was finally revealed (which really doesn't happen until the very end), I wanted to spend more time in it. I can imagine all types of situations where the various abilities might work together to be useful, sort of like Brandon Sandersons Mistborn novels. I hope there is more of that.
2. I'll admit it - I grew attached to some of the secondary characters. Rey and Hekla mostly, but I'm also curious about Saga's story even though we know little about her character.

I waffled between a 3 and a 4 star rating. Given all that I disliked about it, and the fact that I scoffed my way through the first 60% of the book, it seems like a 5 is a clear no, and a 4 may be too generous. But I immediately went and put the sequel in my cart... why would I buy a sequel for a book I thought rated a 2 or 3? (I know I know - the specific rating doesn't matter... but it's a metaphor for the question “how much did I like this book?”). I still don't have an answer, but I settled on the more generous rating. Because why not reward the author for the good things and the parts that did bring me enjoyment.

I'm annoyed with myself that I liked this book. I'm not interested in weddings and marriage in general, and the entire setting/premise of this book, about the serendipity of meeting people and the authenticity that connecting with strangers can evoke, was extremely rom-com-y (and takes place during a wedding week). After the first hour or so I was depressed by the contents of the book and a bit angry that I felt I'd been misled by the synopsis. People had clearly confused the sarcastic tone of the narrator with “laugh-out-loud” humor! It doesn't help that the first 1-2 hours of the book deal with chronic depression, infertility, and general hopelessness leading to suicidal thoughts. Although there was a lot of scarcastic irony in those opening chapters and Phoebe's backstory, it wasn't funny to me. It was... depressing.

And yet, I couldn't stop reading. Espach did a fantastic job of bringing every character to life with trivial details that would normally be too pointless to feature in a drama - but that absolutely would be a part of everyday life. My life and perspective have little in common with those of Phoebe, the protagonist, but I still found her in many ways incredibly relatable (aside from being able to talk to strangers at all... I think even if I was suicidal I would not have been able to do that, which would have destroyed the entire story).

I was immediately attached to the way Phoebe formed impressions of others and gradually revised them as time went on. For example, the two characters first introduced as High Bun and Neck Pillow were named such due to their initial physical attributes that Phoebe noted when she first observed them - and although there were no illustrations accompanying the book, I could imagine these stereotypical women's faces and body language and voices based on her description. (Even after Phoebe learns their real names and the narration changes to use those, I replaced their names with their original monikers in my head - because that is often how I refer to strangers in my own life as well.)

I didn't want to like this book because it was rom-com-y and everything just “works out” so unbelievably in the end. I didn't like what that said about me - that I would enjoy such a tropey setting and a happy ending that come very close to mocking a very serious topic (depression and suicide). But that's my own problem. It doesn't change the fact that what made me like the book was the way the tropey setting and (often infuriatingly immature/obnoxious) characters were drawn - in a way that sketched them out through small inconsequential details, in a tone that constantly acknowledged the absurdity of life and families and society even as it painted them all as normal.

After watching a rom-com when I was a kid, I'd find myself fighting the desire to meet people like the leading characters in real life. I'm not sure if it's because I wanted their romance, or if I just liked the idea of being noticed - and rom com characters were always funny and spicy in a way that made me want to be around them. I didn't come away from this book feeling the same way about the characters (I found most of them incredibly annoying due to either immaturity or closed-mindedness), but I came away with a similar feeling of fighting the hope that one day I'd have a serendipitous encounter or be forced into a situation that just serendipitously changed my trajectory and gave me a fresh start. It won't work that way - but I guess there's no harm in enjoying reading about it.